I would love to know what went through the minds of New York editors when Jessica Pressler first handed in her now discredited story of the high school-senior Master of the Universe, who falsely claimed to have run up an eight-figure fortune trading stocks during his lunch period. It’s not entirely surprising the kid managed to dupe one reporter, but where were the older, wiser and more skeptical eyes that were supposed to keep her on track? Why didn’t they sniff the pungent odor of bullshit?
Just for the record, when I read the story I instinctively called it Sketchy in the First Degree: to amass $72 million in three years would require a stupendous rate of return. Someone at the NY Observer had the presence of mind to pull out a calculator and figured that Mohammed Islam’s purported annual rate of return was on the order of 800 percent, assuming he started in 9th grade with $100K to invest. Such exospheric returns, if even possible, would make George Soros look like the Beardstown Ladies.
So, what happened? Obviously, sloppiness and carelessness played a big role, but I believe that the magazine’s editors were also blinded by the Facebook Effect. They had read too many stories of young male techno-wizards who have amassed huge wealth within the span of only a few years on the back of some killer app or another (viz, Instagram, Snap-Chat, Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox), often while they’re still immature enough to require a parental signature to rent a car. The business press is awash in get-richer-than-Croesus tales; we no longer think there’s anything odd about a twenty-something college drop-out with personal wealth valued in the hundreds of millions. Taking a lifetime to accumulate your first $100 million is so 19th century; John D. Rockefeller has been surpassed by Sean Parker and his ilk.
And if a 30-year old like Zuckerberg can be worth $32 billion, then why can’t a 17-year old like Islam rack up a measly $72 million trading penny stocks? The fact that his numbers seemed suspect was ignored because the story somehow aligned with the new paradigm of vast wealth created virtually overnight, all without breaking a sweat.
Brave New Whirl 